Mastering Leadership

Chapter 11 Six Leadership Practices: Spiritual Boot Camp for Leaders

Leadership is a set of practices. The notion of practice is simple: To master anything, you need to practice; to become more effective in our leadership, we must continually practice and improve both our outer game and our inner game.

Here we describe six essential leadership practices that, if approached as ongoing disciplines, reliably mature the inner game and develop outer-game capabilities. These practices, taken together, are a spiritual boot camp for leaders. They are spiritual because they the call forth the highest and best in us. They are a boot camp because they change and restructure us, making us more fit to lead. They reliably transform Reactive Mind into Creative Mind and beyond.

PRACTICE 1: DISCERNING PURPOSE

Life is purposeful. Leadership is purposeful. A primary task of a life creatively led is to discern the purpose of our life. Creative Mind orients itself on the purpose that seeks to come through us. Great leaders stand for what matters and create it. In his book, On Becoming a Leader, Warren Bennis writes: “Leaders are made, not born, and made more by themselves than by any external means. No leader sets out to be a leader per se, but rather to express him/herself freely and fully. Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself. It is precisely that simple, and also that difficult. First and foremost, find out what it is you're about, and be that” (Bennis, 1989).

I Am Not Becoming ...